FREE Voice Over Tips & Insights – From a 25+ year Pro
You Are Part of Someone Else's Hero's Journey. Act Like It.
Joseph Campbell spent his career identifying the universal pattern underlying every great story ever told across every culture in human history. Pixar knows it. Disney knows it. Every great video game writer knows it. And voice actors who understand it — who know exactly where their character lives inside that journey — don't just perform a character. They tell a STORY. Let's dig in.
If You Can Tell Me a Story Without Sound... Guess What I Guarantee You Can Do?
I say this in almost every class and workshop I teach. It comes directly from my puppetry background — and it stops actors cold every time: "If you can tell me a story without sound... guess what I guarantee you can do?" The answer changes everything about how you approach the mic.
The Suspension of Disbelief: Your Most Powerful Ally — and Your Most Tenuous One
Last week I re-watched WALL-E with my four-year-old. I cried three separate times. Over robots. That don't really speak. In a movie I've seen before. And I knew — the whole time — that I was watching computer animated images on a screen. So why was I weeping? And what does that have to do with your next voice acting audition?
That's Not How You Play Guitar.
I've been deep in a YouTube rabbit hole lately. Jimi Hendrix. Stevie Ray Vaughan. Jeff Healey. Watching young people discover these legends for the first time and completely LOSE THEIR MINDS over it. And all I keep thinking is: every single one of these men was told — implicitly or explicitly — that they were doing it wrong. Every. Single. One.
Replace Fear With Curiosity: The Voice Actor's Most Powerful Mindset Shift
Steven Spielberg said it. I've been saying it in coaching sessions. "Replace fear with curiosity." Four words that change everything about how you approach a cold read, an audition, a character, a genre you've never tried before. Here's what that actually looks and sounds like behind the mic.
Writers and Voice Actors Are Dance Partners
The most important word in storytelling is feeling. My colleague Brandon Violette — animation screenwriter and host of The Story Series Podcast — reminded me of that recently. But here's what I want YOU to know: that equation doesn't stop at the page. It travels straight into the booth. Writers and voice actors are dance partners. And once you understand that... everything changes.
Mel Brooks at 100 — A Love Letter From a Kid Who Grew Up on His Films
Today is a HOLY DAY for anyone who has ever laughed at a movie. Mel Brooks turns 100. I wrote him a love letter. It got personal. It got a little mushy. I'm not sorry.